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March 15th, 2009

Leave it to Kyosuke to mindwipe an entire elementary school just to dick with Minamoto.

Impressions:

I suppose it was a decent episode, but it felt a little lackluster for being the show’s finale arc. Then again, Syobai has ZKC marked as ending in March, with more episodes in April, so maybe it’s not ending. I have no real clue and don’t feel like looking it up at the moment.

At any rate, the main problem with the episode is that it was completely and unabashedly 100% setup. There’s nothing wrong with setup so long as the payoff is worth it, but it doesn’t really make for much interesting to talk about aside from just blithely restating the premise of the arc and maybe a little speculation. Especially in the later going, they were pretty heavily drawing parallels between Minamoto’s ‘happy’ school life and the one he provided for the girls, so that’ll probably be the main theme for this arc, although with PANDRA teaching the classes and mini-Kyosuke as a classmate, it’s not hard to see how things develop into the all out fight that the episode preiew indicated.

The episode didn’t even really become particularly interesting until the second half, but even then, it felt like they could have done a lot more with mini-Minamoto than just having everybody fawn over him. We didn’t even get a Double Face glomp either, sadly. Thankfully, Aoi wasn’t able to play dress-up with him because the little kid appearance is just a psychic manifestation via Momo. The fantasy scene of him as a cat eared maid was bad enough. He’d never be able to live it down if they actually got him into a dress. I’m not even sure what to think of Shiho and Aoi popping their tops near the start of the episode for that matter, although Minamoto lost about 45 testasterone points by calling a time out to sew their buttons back on.

Brief Summary:

After a mission, Tanizaki is attacked by a member of Black Phantom and his mind totally scrabled. Minamoto and the Children respond to an high level esper gone berserk. After they suppress him, he’s bewildered and doesn’t understand what’s going on. Minamoto finds the same flower with him that was with Tanizaki and starts putting it together. He decides that Black Phantom must be involved, but is attacked by the same girl on his way home. Kyosuke attacks BABEL (and distracts Fujiko by telling her that her make-up isn’t on) and reads Minamoto’s mind. Once he figures out what happened, he leaves Momo with Minamoto as a psychic conduit. When Minamoto comes to, he metamorphs into a child form, indicative of his mind.

Despite being stuck with only his 10 year old memories, Minamoto is still Minamoto and is extremely intelligent and cognizant of the situation. Everybody lavishes attention on him and he tries his best to respond appropriately. He’s totally amazed by the powers of the Children, although gets dragged into their teasing and fantasies anyway. Meanwhile, the Hound tries to track down the suspect.

The next day, Tohno and Chisato show up to pick up the four of them for school. Kyosuke’s manipulated everybody into believing Minamoto to be a student, and members of PANDRA have taken over various positions of the school to keep an eye on them. Kyosuke himself is masquerading as a classmate. The PANDRA members don’t know why though, just that it’s Kyosuke’s orders. On a nearby roof, Black Phantom dispatches the Hound and turns to the school.

*shrug* Meant finale for the ‘season’ or whatever you want to call it anyway. And yeah, I was pretty sure that Cross Game was taking over ZKC’s timeslot. It wouldn’t be the first time a station erroneously listed episodes that didn’t exist.